077. The City and The City

With apologies to China Miéville for pinching the title, but it is a wonderful title... Today I am using Janelle Stone's "Light Bubbles", a marvellous cityscape image taken from behind a window, and one of mine from Chicago last month.

The light is not the same in the city, in the concrete crevasses it is almost all artificial. The sky comes in slices unless you climb higher, build higher than the others, a Catch-22 race. They invented the skyscraper here, and there is no sign of the swamp from two centuries before. No will o'the wisps floating up on bubbles of swamp gas. The sky light fades so fast, it was day, then the next minute it was dusk and then night was upon us. You came home from the city to my bed, weary with climbing.

068. Ripples

Today I am taking Janelle Stone's "What's that in the water?" from her 100 Snapshots project; and pairing it with more ripples from January this year. After wandering out to the flooded river to take some beautifully atmospheric photos of pearly silver water and contrasting wet black trees, on the way back I cross a stream, mostly channelled between concrete but in some parts more natural. The ducks were in the backwater, the quietwater behind an island out of the rushing floodwaters, pushing the ripples before them, fragmenting the reflected tree branches.

it is nice

weather for ducks

but the rabbits

are flooded out of their

bijou riviera homes

and pile their pellets

now

above the high water mark

first at practicemakesperfect here

017. Blocks

Janelle Stone again provided an image which chimed exactly with the things I was seeing around me in Berlin, her "construction" below left with its subtle shadows and grey tones was in my head when I saw the "Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas" on a scorching hot Saturday. A controversial monument, its scale is the immediately impressive thing about it, but being able to walk into the middle of the field of blocks, see the undulating ground beneath and feel each block has been placed just so, that creeps up on you and makes you contemplate...

you                                                                                                                                             

pile                    things 

                                                                           on me

think my 

                                               corners

should                                                                  be 

                                                                           smoothed

                       where                              is 

my 

                        space?

Postscript: 
At 21:44, 6th June, I "murdered" my cat Seville
 after a sudden illness

008. windows

YB Poetry has a "windows thing" edition coming out soon - here is a preview picture by Dorothee Lang. I was reminded of this when browsing through some of the intriguing blogs in the 100 days 2011 group page, and finding the image below left from Janelle Stone; and my own photo to help inspire something for the YB magazine.

what are the windows that look onto those windows?

                 sometimes, I see movement

                 a flicker across the space

                 someone at home

                 by/with themselves

                 as I gaze outwards    

                                                                                                 sometimes I wave at my reflection

                                                                                                 there could be an army

                                                                                                 of watchers behind the

                                                                                                 bland mirror. Mostly I cross the space

                                                                                                 quickly, shrink from the outside

                                                                                                 in